City of Los Angeles v. Los Angeles City Water Co.

Citations

• 124 Cal. 368
• 57 P. 210
• 1899 Cal. LEXIS 1002

Syllabus

<p>Water Supply of Los Angeles—Contract—Limitation—Consent of Council—Acquiescence.—Under the contract oí the city of Los Angeles with the Los Angeles City Water Company for thirty years’ supply of water to the inhabitants of the city, made in 1868, when its population was less than six thousand, a provision that the water company should not take from the river more than ten inches of water for the use of its waterworks without the previous consent of the city council, whatever its meaning, cannot limit its right in supplying water to the city to ten inches measured under a four-inch pressure, without formal consent of the city council, where it appears that that amount was from the first totally inadequate, and that without objection and with the acquiescence of the city a supply of three hundred inches of water -was originally taken and used to supply the city, and that the supply was, with like acquiescence, increased with the increase of the population to seven hundred inches.</p> <p>Id.—Withdrawal 'of Consent—Invalid Ordinance.—The city having acquiesced in the continued use of a greater amount of water by the water company from 1868 to 1896, and in its expenditure of vast sums of money in supplying the city with water in pursuance of the contract, upon the faith of the continuance of its right to use sufficient water for that purpose, could not withdraw its consent to such use within the period of the contract; and an ordinance passed hy the city council in 1896 limiting the supply of the water company from the river to ten inches of water under a four-inch pressure, is invalid.</p> <p>Id.—Agreement to Pay for Improvements—Expiration of Contract— Bight of Possession—Tender.—Where the water company receives possession under the contract of a small line of wooden pipes, and agreed to construct iron pipes throughout the city, and build new waterworks, as the demands of the city required, and at the expiration of thirty years to return the whole to the city “upon